The present invention relates to the transfer of a new version of a software from a concentrator device to at least one electricity meter in a powerline communication subnetwork.
In the context of electrical supply networks of AMM (Automated Meter Management) type, communications are established between electricity meters (known as smart meters) and a data concentrator device, sometimes referred to as base node or coordinator. This is the case for example in the PRIME (“PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution”) or G3-PLC specifications. Exchanges between the electricity meters and the data concentrator device rely on powerline communications. The concentrator device is then the root of the communication network, which has a logical topology in tree form to allow extending the communications range. Node devices then serve as relays on behalf of other node devices in the communication network when the latter do not manage to receive information directly from the root node device.
The 12th edition of “Bluebook: COSEM Interface Classes and OBIS Object Identification System” published by the DLMS User Association describes a two-phase method for deploying a new software version, broken down into blocks, to electricity meters from the concentrator device: a first phase during which the transfer is made without retransmission, meaning without its being necessary to know whether a block is correctly received before passing to the transfer of the following block, and a second phase subsequent to the first phase during which the transfer of each block that has not been correctly received during the first phase is carried out. When the transfer is interrupted for at least one electricity meter, for example by disconnection of said electricity meter or meters, the transfer subsequently resumes by reimplementation of the first phase. This approach does however lack efficiency.
It is then desirable to overcome these drawbacks of the prior art and in particular to allow increasing the efficiency of the transfer of a new software version intended for electricity meters in a context of electricity supply networks of AMM type in which disconnections of said electricity meters may occur.